Energous WattUp mid-range power transmitter granted approval by FCC

Comments

Power carried by microwaves? I recall one of my engineering professors back in the day (1990?) talk of power transfer from space using such tech. A satellite generating the power would beam it back to earth. The main caveat is that if the satellite moved even a tiny bit during the transfer, you'd spray all that power/radiation across wide swaths of terrain. Any follow-up article on this should focus on how safe it is.

Not microwaves, no. Just straight low-power, non-ionizing RF.

The FCC approval used for it can't be used for microwave transmitters.

Has there been any testing that the IR used by the FaceID sensors/blaster safe? How do we know there are no harmful side-effects years down the road after using this on camera after camera?

You've ever pointed a remote control at yourself? The amount of IR energy used for these types of things is minuscule. Look up the infrared spectrum sometime.

Edit: their FAQ page states that the 5.8 GHz WiFi band is used for energy transmission, and Bluetooth (specifically BTLE) is used for control. I don't see where 3D location info is created. I don't think BTLE has any location information.

What they likely use BTLE for is likely something as simple as determining distance from transmitter which most people use the signal strength as the indicator.

Power carried by microwaves? I recall one of my engineering professors back in the day (1990?) talk of power transfer from space using such tech. A satellite generating the power would beam it back to earth. The main caveat is that if the satellite moved even a tiny bit during the transfer, you'd spray all that power/radiation across wide swaths of terrain. Any follow-up article on this should focus on how safe it is.

Not microwaves, no. Just straight low-power, non-ionizing RF.

The FCC approval used for it can't be used for microwave transmitters.

Has there been any testing that the IR used by the FaceID sensors/blaster safe? How do we know there are no harmful side-effects years down the road after using this on camera after camera?

this technology is MAD and need to be stopped! any RF waves affect your body cells, it's practically cooking our tissue, and higher frequencies breaks DNA helix. It's unhelthy to live in RF polluted areas as we know, and it's going to be very dangerous staying on place between wireless charger and charged device.

It will be interesting to see if they can commercialize this technology in the next couple of years. Although the short distances may seem like a negative, if you had a charger at or near your desk and one near your bed, your device would be pulling in power at the two places many people spend ⅔'s of their day. It's not like an iPhone / iPad / MacBook need to be charging 24 hours a day for them to be effective.

I think if the effective charging distance can be expanded more, a benefit could be reducing the size of a device's battery, assuming you'd have more opportunities for wireless charging throughout the day.

Edit: their FAQ page states that the 5.8 GHz WiFi band is used for energy transmission, and Bluetooth (specifically BTLE) is used for control. I don't see where 3D location info is created. I don't think BTLE has any location information.

What they likely use BTLE for is likely something as simple as determining distance from transmitter which most people use the signal strength as the indicator.

It can be as simple as the receiving device saying “my current field strength is X” and you can localize it by varying field strength in pockets until you find it.

No complex 3-D localization tech required. If the device is a phone with an accelerometer it can also tell the transmitter “I’m moving...you can try to find me again or “I’m really moving and probably leaving the area.”

Tesla, the father of our modern electrical system, designed this wireless electrical transmission over 100 years ago.

Get back to us when you have any proof of the efficiency of his schemes.
It's not all that hard to transmit power wirelessly. Not dissipating
most of it along the way is the hard part. Broadcasting kilowatts of power to charge one iPhone from a distance would be a very simple but wasteful process.

A potential positive side effect of the proliferation of this type of technology is that it will provide more opportunities for other mobile devices, and I'm thinking smart watches, smart wearables, IoT sensors, and perhaps even smartphones to use energy harvesting to supplement their energy strategy. So even devices that aren't specifically designed to work with a certain brand of wireless charging system can still draw energy from it passively. I'm kind of surprised that Apple Watch doesn't have an energy harvesting capability already, but I'm sure there are still technical hurdles to overcome.